


Good Morning, Good Morning

by SegaBarrett



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 18:01:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6339685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chilton is sure that he's sleepwalking through life, except for one thing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Morning, Good Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenPhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenPhoenix/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Hannibal, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Title is from a Beatles song.

If Freud were here, he would be having a field day. Frederick Chilton knew this to be true, even as much as the phrase was such a cliché these days; Chilton was also glad that Freud was most decidedly not here.  
Chilton had studied the greats in his graduate program; proof of that was hanging on the wall, even as much as his colleague Hannibal Lecter loved to rub in his face that he was a Ph.D. and not an MD.   
Like it mattered. That wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was that Will Graham was seeing Dr. Lecter for therapy instead of him.

He tried not to think of Will Graham at all, and if he really had his druthers (such as odd expression, so unlike Chilton normally, but as he’d taken up reading Faulkner recently these little Southern sayings had stayed with him), he would think of him not at all.

But he did think about him, and often. He pictured him bent over Chilton’s desk, ass presented to him, allowing Chilton to run his fingers up and down the cleft, calling Chilton’s name.   
He wouldn’t offer up a half-hearted argument about how “we work together and should keep things professional”, about how he was too damaged to be with anyone.

Anyone except Lecter, apparently.

He would keep things professional. That was what he did, after all.

He would wait his turn, play the good, supportive friend. At least for now.

***

“This is consistent with blunt force trauma,” one of the forensic techs – someone had told Chilton their name, but he couldn’t really be bothered to remember – relayed, as Chilton looked over the scene with a dazed sense of wonder, or maybe horror. It was difficult to tell, these days, as numb as he had grown to all of it.

He had seen worse.

Just the same, this was pretty bad.

He scanned the crowd – people really came out in droves for this sort of thing, it seemed – and finally found Will Graham off in the corner, staring at the crime scene.

He almost looked like a shadow, like something not quite there.

Chilton guided over, let his arms swing by his sides as if he was making himself bigger somehow, insisting upon taking up more space.

“Hello, Agent Graham,” he said, standing behind Will’s form. Even though he’d already told Chilton a hundred times that he was not an agent.

Will turned around, quickly, his dark hair all unkempt and out of place. Chilton fought an urge to reach out and touch it, to press it away from his eyes and glasses.

“What are you thinking?” Chilton asked.

“About horrible things,” Will replied. His voice was deadly calm, but Chilton picked up something behind it, though he didn’t know if it was fear, maybe, or an awareness of having fallen down into the darkness and acknowledging an inability to escape.

Maybe some days the darkness was more comfortable than an ever-glaring light that showed all of someone’s flaws.

“Horrible case-related things?” Chilton pressed.

Will shrugged.

“Horrible things in general. What’s your take on this case?”

Chilton’s eyes went wide.

“You’d like to know what I think? I thought you were the expert on looking inside the mind of every creepy psychopath?”

Will chuckled, but it was a low, sad sound, one that Chilton didn’t want to analyze too closely, lest he come crumbling down in front of him. The house of cards upon which Will Graham was built was none too stable; that much had always been painstakingly clear to Chilton. And yet, Chilton always wanted a closer look.

“And I think this one looks a little bit like you.” 

***

In Chilton’s first office, he had had a cage that housed a pair of rats. He had named them Freud and Perls, and they had gotten along perfectly well. However, when he had tried to add Ellis to the mix, the other two had ganged up on him to where he’d needed to return the poor little guy or risk calamity.

He had thought that was interesting. Rats who live alone for their entire lives would sometimes bite their tails off or just fade away due to loneliness.

But try and get in between a bonded pair, and you would see where that got you.

***

He didn’t have rats in his office anymore, not these days. Now, the only living thing in his office at the Hospital was him. Wall to wall were books, files, filing cabinets, and a computer that was still maddeningly running Windows Vista.

It was like being in a morgue.

Chilton picked up a folder and opened it up, examined the details within, and locked it up in the filing cabinet again as a way to stop himself from thinking about Will Graham. He felt like a child amusing himself on a car ride, trying to play I Spy and not getting very far because all he ever spied was something beginning with the letter W.

Chilton felt that he had never truly been a child; Will Graham seemed much the same. They had been born serious, born drawn into something greater than themselves.

And they were both looking for some kind of missing piece, and never finding it.

***

“Any progress, Mr. Graham?” Chilton asked the next day, figuring the man would consider it a step up from Agent Graham. 

Will looked like he was far away; his eyes were glassy and even his breathing was more quiet than Chilton felt comfortable with. 

What was he thinking about? What mystery was he trying to untangle?

Finally, he said, “No. No progress, yet. I’m still trying to figure out why this victim.”

“Well, let’s go through it together. She’s a junior at U of Baltimore… Or was, at least,” Chilton corrected, adjusting his tie and breathing out a moment. “Mary Beth Quigley.” 

“I don’t see any reason for why. At least not yet – I need a pattern. Maybe it was just a crime of passion. Boyfriend maybe? Ex-boyfriend?”

“Doesn’t have one. Get this – she was studying to become a nun.” Chilton was surprised that they even still existed in this day and age. Then again, maybe that was the reason why. Looking over things like this who wouldn’t want to retreat to a convent, far away from the death and destruction of everyday life?

“Wow,” Will said, “So, somebody who wasn’t particularly fond of their time at Catholic school, perhaps?”

Chilton rolled his eyes. His mother had been a Catholic, a “nice Cuban girl”. 

His father had not been a nice man, nor Cuban. His grandparents had not been thrilled.

What his father had been was smart. So smart that he hadn’t had much room for anyone who wasn’t, and he considered Frederick’s mother in that category, as well as Frederick.

“I went to Catholic school,” Chilton offered. “For a couple of years, at least. I guess I could see it. But it would be odd to target her when, if they’ve got a problem with a nun, it would make sense to go after, well, an actual nun. This seems to be beating around the bush a tad bit.”

He stood up a little straighter.

“It’s a stretch,” he finished. “I feel like the answer is here, we’re just not finding it. It’s probably staring us right in the face.”

***

Another body was found the next morning. Chilton didn’t want to get out of bed, and he found himself staring up at the ceiling, considering whether it was even worth it to leave his house and walk around in this world of loneliness, of people grappling with things they didn’t understand.

Maybe he had become a psychologist to find out if he could figure out the secret that everyone was looking for. He hadn’t.

Yet he had found Will Graham. 

He listened to the man’s instructions on the phone and drove out to meet him, trying not to wrap his head around another life gone, another candle snuffed out.

Sometimes it was too much.

There was a name – Kay Bentley. 

There were pictures of her. Chilton wondered how the FBI expected him to untangle all of this; usually, they brought him the evil-doers after the case had already been solved; usually, he was picking them apart instead of putting the clues all together.

He thought about not coming in at all, but he drove to the scene and met Will Graham.

“Another one,” Chilton commented.

“I see him,” Will told him.

***

The next time Chilton saw Will Graham, he was looking through a kaleidoscope. He was standing in Chilton’s office; Chilton had just arrived back from lunch.

“Is that helping you come up with a plan?” Chilton inquired.

“Maybe sometimes you can’t figure out a person,” Will mused. “Maybe it’s just a series of random images.”

“Maybe you just haven’t had the right break yet.”

“How many people will need to die before I get the right break, Dr. Chilton? Or do you not care at all?”

Chilton let his mouth snap shut. 

Maybe it was all just a series of random images. Maybe it was right.

But it wasn’t that he didn’t care. He was just determined never to show it.

***

Chilton returned home, letting the emptiness of the huge house overwhelm him. Maybe he needed to get something for companionship – a dog or a cat or maybe something really easy, like a hermit crab. Or a pair of rats again.

After all, animals were easier than people. As long as you fed them, they seemed happy enough. People were more complicated – a series of random images, Will had said, and that was true. 

How many images made up Will Graham, and why did Chilton care? He’d seen Hannibal Lecter slinking his arm over Will’s shoulder – but not recently.

Recently he had been seeing Will alone, and looking alone.

“We all die alone,” Chilton mused. He’d turn on the television, perhaps, and plan out his next week.

Maybe he would figure out this case, and perhaps he would see Will Graham again.

He was still trying to figure out why any of it mattered. 

Did it matter to Hannibal Lecter? And did it matter to Will Graham?

Chilton began to unbutton his shirt. He looked at himself in the full-length mirror.

“Maybe they’re all alone, too.”

***

He didn’t know why he drove to Will Graham’s little cabin in the woods, not exactly. There was an uncertainty there that Chilton wasn’t ready for, but he was driving there anyway and now he was walking, as if his feet were moving of his own accord. But was it his heart driving the action, or something else?

Frederick Chilton still wasn’t sure that he had a heart.

There were dogs, everywhere, and if Chilton had hoped he was going to make a smooth and subtle entrance, the dogs had collectively decided to quash that idea.

He had liked dogs growing up, though not as much as cats – but Chilton felt there should be a limit on such things, and as he counted at least seven dogs, Will had surpassed that limit.

And one of them was nipping at Chilton’s ankles.

The door to the cabin opened, and Will Graham emerged, hair all askew as if he had just woken up, and looked around as if to figure out what all the commotion was about.

“Hi, Will,” Chilton blurted, before he had time to wonder about why he had suddenly decided to call this man by his full name. He never called anyone by their full name – no one important, that was. That had been drummed into him by his father – never be impolite, always show respect, and if someone wasn’t worthy of respect, if someone isn’t higher or more important than you, then you just don’t acknowledge them at all, because they are simply wallpaper and nothingness. They are flies and you don’t have time to swat them away.

“Hello, Dr. Chilton,” Will replied formally. His shoulders were stiff; he was on edge, that much was obvious. Maybe he didn’t want to see Chilton because he didn’t want to think about the case, or maybe he was worried about what Hannibal Lecter might do if he found out.

Chilton discovered in one chilling and thrilling moment that he didn’t care which one it was. He threw thoughts of the case aside – it will solve itself in time, the answer will come – and stepped up once more into Will Graham’s sphere, into his influence. 

“I need to talk to you.”

Will opened his mouth, as if to ask why, or what this was all about, and Chilton took the moment.

He thought about something like grabbing a bull by its horns and riding it wherever it was planning to go.

He pressed his lips up against Will Graham’s and held on for dear life.

Will buckled slightly, at first, as if wanting to pull back, or run and hide. Dogs were barking around him, around them, as if ready to chase off this new threat to their master.

Chilton was about to pull back, to scuttle away and to say that this all was just a huge mistake, one that he didn’t plan on repeating.

But then something happened.

Will Graham began to kiss back. He snaked his arms up Chilton’s sides, rubbing his back, moving his hands up to touch his neck and ears.

He could hear something in the other man’s breathing, something like… want.

Something like a need to break a day apart and make it something that he could live in.

He broke the kiss.

“Did you want to come inside, Dr. Chilton?”

Chilton sucked a breath in through his nose.

“Yes.”

He stepped into the cabin and tried not to think of anything else as Will led him to a back room where there was a mattress on the floor.

He wondered if Will Graham was lonely too, in this cabin out in the middle of nowhere, or if he was running from everything, including loneliness itself.

He wondered what Will Graham had found, and if he could find it too.

“It’s cold… Are you sure you want to take off your shirt?” Will asked. He wasn’t quite looking at Chilton, but there was a strange warmth that seemed to be floating off him; maybe it was all in his head.

Chilton loosened his tie. He felt like he was stepping out of himself.

Will leaned in to kiss him again, and Chilton decided that somewhere in his brain, he was solving all the mysteries in the world.

This case would come, it would unlock itself, and there would be another madman behind bars for him to poke and prod at while he pretended to be an expert.

For now, however, the world was quiet. He could hear dogs barking in the distance, and he was sure that somewhere, he could feel the warmth of Will Graham and the slowly rising moon.


End file.
